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Running smart contracts on a deterministic Linux runtime has never before been possible. For the first time, developers will have an entire operating system for smart contracts.

One of the key areas where Bitcoin developers are working with all efforts is solving the scalability issue of the Bitcoin network. Lightning Network is the widely proposed solution in solving Bitcoin’s capability issue that allows for transactions to be taken off the Bitcoin blockchain thereby freeing up huge space in the Bitcoin network.

Security boffins have discovered a critical vulnerability in a GnuPG cryptographic library that allowed the researchers to completely break RSA-1024 and successfully extract the secret RSA key to decrypt data. Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is popular open source encryption software used by many operating systems from Linux and FreeBSD to Windows and macOS X. It's the same software used by the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden to keep his communication secure from law enforcement. The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2017-7526, resides in the Libgcrypt cryptographic library used by GnuPG, which is prone to local FLUSH+RELOAD side-channel attack.

A group of three French associations free software advocacy groups wants to cancel software licence agreement signed between the French Ministry of Education and Microsoft France.

A brief analysing of the distinction between weak and strong copyleft (sometimes called viral licensing - a pejorative name for copyleft licences) based on the European Directive on the legal protection of computer programs.

As Linux PCs are increasingly used to connect Windows PCs, they ought to use a security package as well. The lab at AV-TEST put 16 current security solutions to the test under Ubuntu – against Linux and Windows threats. The result is bitter for several products: for some, 85% of the Windows malware goes through unrecognized, and up to 75% of pure Linux malware remains undetected. The Linux world is largely considered a safe fortress against malware, including various types of trojans. But many Linux machines run in a network with Windows PCs. Roughly half of all Web servers, for instance, run with a Linux system. These in turn serve billions of users on the Web. That's why Web servers are a tempting target to be used as a bridgehead for Windows malware threats.

As data centers transform, the core insight behind virtualization -- that of carving up a large, expensive server into several virtual machines -- is being turned on its head. Instead of divvying the resources of individual servers, large numbers of servers are aggregated into a single warehouse-scale (though still virtual!) “computer” to run highly distributed applications.

Technology only exists thanks to innovation. If nobody was pushing the boundaries with fresh ideas, then technology, and the people who depend on it, would have died out with the neanderthals. But while many people might believe the big tech vendors are the ones responsible for driving most of the innovation in computing today, that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

18F has quietly become the bleeding edge of the US federal government's adoption of open source software. Read about the benefits and challenges of open source going mainstream.

Indian government software applications are set to make the shift to open source, potentially boosting the pace at which such programmes are developed, and leading to millions of dollars in savings by moving away from proprietary systems.

Here’s a close look at the technique and code for console handling in Standard (i.e., ISO/ANSI) C/C++. In the latter part of the article readers are encouraged to write their own code for the clrscr, getch, gotoxy, text color, and text background functions.

The government of the Flanders region in Belgium is using open source for its new open data forum, opened this week Tuesday. The site host is running Linux, web server Apache and content management system Joomla for the open data knowledge exchange website.

Analysis Microsoft is caught in a monkey-trap, created by cloud computing and Free Software, coupled with short-term thinking and a dose of not-invented-here syndrome.

You know how monkey-traps work? You make a small hole in a coconut shell, put some bait in it and tie it to something. The monkey comes along, reaches in for the bait and grabs a handful. But when it tries to retrieve its prize, it can't: its fist won't fit through the hole. The monkey is trapped by its own greed. Under pressure, the animal isn't able to choose between escape and letting go of the goodies; you just walk up and whack it over the head.

That's the situation Microsoft is in right now with its virtualisation strategy.

FOSDEM is a free event that offers open source communities a place to meet, share ideas and collaborate.

It is renowned for being highly developer-oriented and brings together 5000+ geeks from all over the world.

Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, said today that Linux is the future of gaming despite the minuscule share of the market it has today....Linux gaming generally accounts for less than one percent of the market by any measure...but Valve is going to do its best to make sure Linux becomes the future of gaming by extending its Steam distribution platform to hardware designed for living rooms.

Oh, those terrible people at Google. In the latest "Scroogled" ad, Redmond says Google is peddling vitamin supplements to kids. And that's not all.

Photographers still irked about about Adobe’s decision to make Photoshop rental-only have a new alternative with the re-release of the pioneering LightZone application as a free, open-source program for Windows, Linux and (eventually) Mac OS. LightZone, initially released in 2005, was one of the first programs to offer 16-bit. non-destructive editing of RAW images, plus the ongoing ability to selectively withdraw adjustments and innovative batch-processing options.

Canonical has announced that Verizon Wireless has joined the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group (CAG). Samir Vaidya, a director at Verizon's Device Technology Team said the company was joining to "participate in technology discussions around this new platform, which has the ability to bring new and exciting features to developers and ultimately, customers."

The Linux Professional Institute has opposed a move by Microsoft to partner with the Kenyan government in an ambitious US$2 billion laptop project. During a visit last month, Microsoft International President Jean Philippe Courtois met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and announced a training partnership, a move that has received mixed reactions. The plan calls for the government to issue a laptop to every child enrolling in primary school next year.

Now that Steam has come to Linux — and with it, brought a handful of popular games, as well as a larger handful of less popular games — the platform is very slowly becoming viable for gaming. However, Linux games still tend to be ports — and we all know that while ports are better than nothing, they’re usually not as good as developing a game natively. Kickstarter project Leadwerks for Linux aims to do just that, and bring sophisticated game development to Linux.